


The Spheres Are in Commotion

by CantStopImagining



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Slow Burn, it has the d word in it idk if i should be warning about that, lots of friendship stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 18:52:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9398429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: Her eyes drift over the familiar spirals of blonde hair, the pair of distinctive yellow lensed glasses hanging from one ear, the leg jingling under the desk, and her breath catches.  She doesn’t know why or what it means, but when blue eyes meet hers, followed by a long, slow grin, she feels herself flush.or, a high school AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this forever ago, but I'm clearing out my drafts and figured I might as well post this, mostly because there's one line I love, and I don't want it to go to waste ;) I can't promise I'll ever finish this because I kind of lost momentum for it, but I wanted to put it out there and see if anybody would be interested in me continuing with it. I guess I haven't really figured out details of this AU, so there might be loose ends that don't make sense. I hope it's enjoyable, anyways.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and as always you can come yell at me at @katemckutie on tumblr.

When Erin first becomes aware of her, they’re both outside the humanities building. It’s the crossover period between school bells and as usual she doesn’t have time to make it from AP Calculus to AP World History without running the length between the two buildings. She hates her sophomore year timetable already, and it’s only partway through the fall semester. She’s seen Abby once today, before home room, and she’d become so attached to having her there all the time last year when they shared almost all their classes, that she still feels a little ungrounded, even more frazzled than she usually is. The other students, much like wild horses, seem to be able to smell fear on her. It just makes them worse. She’s already had to avoid being tripped up twice today, and it’s only fourth period.

She knows she’s going to drop her books before she does, her thick and heavy algebra textbook having inched its way down her arms the whole journey between buildings, but she doesn’t have time to stop. When it falls, though, the rest of the stack comes plummeting down too, and the strap of her leather satchel falls off her shoulder, the bag hitting the ground with a thud, and it’s all she can do not to start crying in the middle of the school yard, surrounded by people who already think she’s a freak.

“Lemme get those.”

Instinctively, Erin pulls away from the contact. She grabs blindly for her things, knees scraping against the tarmac, blinking back tears. Everyone is laughing at her. She can hear them in the distance, someone cheering and clapping sarcastically. When she looks up, she’s greeted by a neat stack of books being held out to her by a girl she doesn’t know. Though her eyes are bright with interest, and her mouth is soft and curved into a smile, it doesn’t calm Erin any. If anything, it makes it worse.

“Thanks,” she mumbles, pulling herself to her feet. Erin’s still not 100% sure that this person isn’t about to kick her back onto the ground, so she holds the books to her chest, tries not to make eye contact.

“No worries,” the stranger assures her, securing Erin’s bag on her shoulder. She grins. Erin flinches at the contact, trying to force a smile at her, before she goes scurrying off towards her class. She doesn’t look back, and hopes she imagines the feeling of eyes following her as she walks up the front steps of the building.

Perhaps if she were a normal person, Erin would have forgotten all about it by the end of the day, but she isn’t, and she doesn’t. Standing outside the computer lab waiting for Abby, she can’t stop her mind anxiously mulling over the same two minutes that have been on her mind all day. The rest of the day has been uneventful - a couple of kids sniggering behind her in art class, but that's nothing unusual - but she’s felt tense and uncomfortable all the same, as if she’s just waiting for something else to happen.

It’s been better since she met Abby. She doesn’t get stuffed into lockers or beaten. She hasn’t had anything thrown at her, nobody’s stuffed anything down her throat or shoved her head first into a toilet. Middle school had been living hell. High school, so far, is better. Maybe just nightmare status. She doesn't understand how Abby is so nonchalant about it, uncaring about what people think of her, but she’s sort of grateful for it. She’s more at ease around Abby. It’s easier to block out the noise, the laughter. Abby turns it into a game, a joke. One that Erin isn’t the butt of.

Erin glances through the square of glass in the door to the lab and groans. Abby’s chatting away to Mr. Fenchurch as if the bell didn’t go almost fifteen minutes ago.

Moving stiffly back to her place by the doorframe, Erin sighs. She hates waiting. She’s all too aware of how much of a dork she looks standing outside a classroom alone after school. Clenching and unclenching her fists, she watches the last dregs of students drifting down the corridor, wonders which are heading to detention. She’s trying not to get overwhelmed.

Then she spots her. She’s unmistakable, all unruly blonde curls and bright blue eyes and dimples, moving through a crowd of people, walking alongside a girl much taller than her, laughing and joking. Erin’s eyes lock onto her in an instant, before quickly looking away. She waits, patiently, until the group of people have passed, and then Erin allows herself to look up, turning, watching the back of the girl sauntering down the hallway. She has no idea why she does it, what draws her to her, besides one tiny act of kindness that’s probably - definitely - meaningless.

“Earth to Erin Gilbert, come in Erin Gilbert?”

Erin jumps, spinning round to find Abby standing behind her, a lopsided grin on her face. Puzzled, Abby looks down the hall before looking back at her friend. She doesn’t ask though, and Erin’s grateful, because she has no answer.

-

In the cafeteria, at the table she and Abby always sit at - alone, just the two of them, always - Erin pushes food around her plate. She tries to concentrate on the story Abby’s telling, a dramatic retelling of some documentary she caught on cable the night before, but her heart’s not in it. She hates herself for being so distracted, especially now that she and Abby barely see each other at school, but classes are sucking most of the life out of her, and she hasn’t been sleeping properly. She’s finding it hard to concentrate on anything at all. Anxiety is crawling its way through her body, despite the medication her mom insists she takes, and she doesn’t want to mention it to anybody because she doesn’t want to be sent back to therapy. AP classes are meant to be hard. She’ll adjust, she always does. It’s just going to take time.

“Anyway, it was totally dramatised. I went straight onto the wikipedia page afterward and half of it was bull crap, made up to get viewers. Puh-lease.”

Erin snaps back into the conversation, laughing uneasily, “it worked,” she points out, “you watched it, didn’t you?”

“That’s not the point. It’s mis-information,” Abby tells her, rolling her eyes. She’s picking at a burrito, squashing it between her fingers before eating it. Erin zones out watching her.

When the bell goes, Erin drags herself out of her chair, waving goodbye to Abby and heading in the opposite direction. She’s so tired, the thought of sitting through a class on 18th century poetry makes her want to be sick. She drifts into class and takes her seat, once again grateful for alphabetised seating charts, especially since the person who is supposed to sit next to her in this class has never shown up. She’s used to being surrounded by empty seats. It’s sort of comforting.

Erin’s already opened her notebook, organised her pens on her desk, and opened her anthology to the right page, when she becomes aware of someone sitting down next to her. Her eyebrows raise as she carefully glances to the left of her, wondering who is unfortunate enough to be the occupant of the desk next to Erin Gilbert, but not wanting to draw attention to herself.

Her eyes drift over the familiar spirals of blonde hair, the pair of distinctive yellow lensed glasses hanging from one ear, the leg jingling under the desk, and her breath catches. She doesn’t know why or what it means, but when blue eyes meet hers, followed by a long, slow grin, she feels herself flush.

“Come here often?” the blonde asks, tilting her head.

If Erin was a normal person, if she didn’t have to rehearse every sentence she said to strangers at least 5 times over in her head before saying it aloud, she might have made some kind of quip, told her ‘yes, but you don’t’, or something, but she doesn’t. Instead she looks down, scratches her pen across the top of her notepad, and tries not to look that way for the rest of their 50 minute period.

-

Her name is Jillian. Erin hears the teacher call it, watches her scribble it across the front of her new exercise book. She doesn’t know why she needs to know this, but she thinks it’s significant. It doesn’t really suit her, but it’s pretty. Erin’s always hated her own name. It sounds cold, distant. She has nothing to shorten it to - not like Abby, who cringes at ‘Abigail’, despite it being a warm, comforting name - so she feels sort of stuck with it. She wonders, absent-mindedly, whether Jillian’s friends call her Jill, whether her parents call her Jilly-Bean. She wonders why she cares. She doesn’t care. 

(Erin’s parents don’t call her anything affectionate. She doesn’t remember them ever doing that. Abby complains about ‘Monkey’, and ‘Curious Georgina’, but at least she knows her parents care enough to call her something silly and frivolous). 

Erin writes the name into her journal, like a secret. She doesn’t know why.

Later, she feels stupid and tears the page out, puts her journal back in the box under her bed. She tears the paper into shreds and dumps it in the garbage. She’s not sure why it’s such a big deal. 

It isn’t. 

-

Erin is the only one who ever gets sent to detention, despite being the one pushed to the ground, or the one with her mouth taped shut, or, in this case, the one whose locker has been filled with garbage. She used to cry at the thought of detention, but now she doesn’t. At first, she used to tear up the slips, hide them from her parents, but now she realises that even if she left them out in clear view, her parents probably wouldn’t notice. They’re too busy trying to trick the entire neighbourhood into believing that Erin’s a perfect daughter, that their family is everything you’d expect of a small-town family, two loving parents who _don’t_ argue (they do), a daughter who doesn’t see ghosts at the end of her bed… they probably don’t mind that she winds up in detention so long as nobody finds out. Erin can’t hate them for that. She’s just as concerned about what other people think of her as they are. And though she doesn’t cry anymore, she’s still miserable about being sent to detention, still worries about what her school record looks like, whether her AP classes outweigh them on her college applications. 

It’s been a while since she’s found herself sitting meekly at the back of Mrs. Hewitt’s room, glancing at the clock every five minutes. She tries to keep to herself, but, as usual, that’s easier said than done. She stares at the sheet of paper in front of her, at her handwriting cramped on the lines, and ignores the sniggers when an eraser hits the side of her face. She doesn’t even flinch. That would have made her cry, too, but she’s used to it. It’s remarkable what a person can get used to.

“Hey, Chad,” Erin hears from somewhere to her side, “you’re a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity.”

Erin keeps her head down, but glances through her hair to where the voice comes from. Her breath hitches as she sees her. Jillian, dressed in dungarees and a crop top, sitting three desks over, Doc Marten-clad feet up on the desk. Erin quickly looks away.

“Dude, did she just roast you with Toy Story?” someone else says, sniggering.

“Whatever, _dyke_ ,” another voice - Chad - says.

Mrs. Hewitt shushes everyone, glaring at them over wire-rimmed glasses, and the room of delinquents quiets down. Once her pulse has stopped racing, Erin risks a glance in Jillian’s direction, and when she meets the other girl’s eyes, she even manages a smile. Jillian grins back.

-

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

Erin jumps a little at the voice, realising it’s directed at her, and slowing. She’s so used to hurrying out of detention as quickly as possible to avoid people, she hadn’t even contemplated that Jillian might actually want a conversation. Nobody ever wanted a conversation with Ghost Girl.

Then again, this could just be another cruel joke.

“What’d you get busted for?” Jillian continues, falling into step with her.

“Didn’t do my calculus homework,” Erin lies, hauling her satchel higher onto her shoulder. She’s already embarrassed herself in front of this girl twice; Jillian doesn’t need to know about the garbage, “how about you?”

Smiling sheepishly, Jillian pulls on the top edge of the khaki coloured top she’s wearing, “dress code violation. I guess Mr. Heyney has a thing against stomachs. Funny, seeing as he’s a biology teacher.”

Erin laughs awkwardly, trying not to think about the expanse of soft white flesh that got Jillian put into detention. Her ears feel hot, and she’s sure her whole face is turning red. She tugs self-consciously on the hem of her knee-length skirt and looks away.

“Your name is Erin?”

Erin freezes, tries to remember the last time someone addressed her by her name that wasn’t one of her parents, or teachers, or Abby.

“Yes,” she says, “with an E.”

She cringes. _Duh._

“Ah, you don’t spell it with a ‘q’. Duly noted,” Jillian grins, and Erin feels her heart race, braces herself for whatever’s coming next.

It doesn’t come.

“I’m Holtzmann.”

Erin looks at the leather-gloved hand that’s being held out towards her, and awkwardly shakes it, scrunching her nose up in an uneasy laugh, which Jillian - Holtzmann - tilts her head at, smiling at her as though she’s trying to figure her out. It’s not the same teasing expression she’s seen on other people’s faces her whole life - it’s genuine, soft.

“You can call me Holtz.”

-  
 Erin doesn’t mention Holtzmann to Abby. She isn’t really sure why, but she feels warm at the thought of having a secret, something that’s just hers.

It’s not really a secret. It isn’t an anything.

It feels like it might be _something_ though.

-

“Are we still on for that Ghost Jumpers marathon Saturday night?” Abby asks, as they’re eating lunch. 

Well, _she’s_ eating lunch. Erin’s been staring at her own food tray - plain rice, boiled chicken, orange segments, a cup of juice - for five minutes but hasn’t touched anything. Chad Harris spat at her on her way from collecting the tray to sitting down, and it’s pretty much put her off eating.

“Absolutely,” Erin smiles, looking up at her, “I’ll bring snacks.”

“It’s all a bunch of boloney, but I can’t resist watching people soil themselves over a candlestick falling over or whatever - you know that stuff’s totally motorised. A little switch in the bottom of it and _voila_ , you’ve got yourself a ghostly apparition. Amateur hour.”

Erin laughs, nodding with enthusiasm that isn’t faked. Abby debunking shows on the Sci-Fi channel offers endless hours of entertainment.

“It’s shows like that that make the rest of us seem crazy,” Abby says.

“Crazy? Tell me more.”

Erin freezes at the unexpected and familiar voice, twisting in her seat to see Holtzmann standing over their table, hands in the pockets of her brown slacks, a loose grey button down shirt with paint splattered down it tied in a knot at her stomach. That same weird necklace she always wears is dangling from her pale neck, where some of her buttons are undone, and her yellow lensed glasses are perched on top of a nest of messy hair.

“Ignore her, Erin,” Abby growls, immediately becoming defensive of her friend, “can we help you?”

Holtzmann seemingly ignores her, leaning across the table to Erin. She lifts her hand from where it’s flat against the table, and lifts it to her mouth, lips skimming Erin’s knuckles ever so lightly.

“M’lady,” she says, bowing, and then reaching into her pocket, “your dessert.”

Frowning, and no doubt bright red from the unexpected gesture, Erin takes the napkin-wrapped item and sets it hesitantly down on the table.

“Holtzy!” comes a holler from another table, and Holtz turns, pausing only to wink in Erin’s direction.

“Pattycakes, do not fear, I’m on my way,” she drawls, sashaying away from them in a way that’s almost rhythmic. 

Abby’s staring at her as she unwraps the slice of cake from the paper napkin, which only causes her cheeks to flush an even darker shade of tomato.

“What in the heck was that?”

-


End file.
